Students are in season at the ‘ol debt collection agencies around the US. Congress, that fountain of sincerity, has also made bankruptcy harder to declare with these loans. These kids are getting an education of a sort.

Forget life and liberty, it makes people happy to pursue you for money. I've done this subject before, and things haven't changed much. Stupidity continues to be national education policy.

As the number of people taking out government-backed student loans has exploded, so has the number who have fallen at least 12 months behind in making payments — about 5.9 million people nationwide, up about a third in the last five years.

In all, nearly one in every six borrowers with a loan balance is in default. The amount of defaulted loans — $76 billion — is greater than the yearly tuition bill for all students at public two- and four-year colleges and universities, according to a survey of state education officials.

To get the money back, the Department of Education last fiscal year paid more than $1.4 billion to collection agencies and other groups to hunt down defaulters.

The obvious, explained

This was inevitable. Total outstanding debt is $1 trillion. At the current rate, the existing $76 billion in outstanding loans will hit around $300 billion soon enough.

This was inevitable. So debt is costing more than the actual cost of an education? What a coincidence. People have now been screaming for at least a decade at the cost of college education. The result? Raise prices and squeeze out every cent more, and make sure that 1/6 of the college students wind up with crippled credit ratings. That’s about 2% of the entire population of the United States, and a much bigger percentage of the working population.

I’m not going to regurgitate the story of the latest form of economic genocide being perpetrated on US citizens. Just read the NYT story, it’s like a permanent emetic if you happen to believe in any sort of society. Let’s look at the principles that have trashed a large percentage of the next generation of US college students.

The insanity of charging people a fortune to get an education to become productive members of that alleged society was never even questioned. Congress, that fountain of anal recidivism, and the sainted profession of educators certainly did nothing to obstruct the big education gouge. Who needs trained people, anyway? America can run on greed and incompetence, can’t it? What’s so wrong with Death by Maladministration, anyway? It’s been working fine since 1980.

Who needs a future when you can have a few bucks now?

If you were deliberately trying to turn the US into an ex-superpower/ underperforming Third World country, you couldn’t go past this sort of strategic planning. Wipe out the academic capabilities of the nation, and you’ll get back to the Middle Ages faster. Who needs brilliance, when you can have creative accountancy and issue more food stamps instead?

America doesn’t need technology or credibility. It can get by on the love of money and the sweet smell of corporate sphincters. Debt collectors are the equivalent of Mother Teresa in this wonderful new world of unreconstructed bull. The re-written form of American history explains it all:

At Valley Forge the seeds of victory were sown by depreciation accountancy at its best. Fred, the accountant, deducted his chilblains and rented out his friends’ gangrene, and the British surrendered. Some guy called George Washington showed up later and took all the credit from Fred, but we know better now…

The question is whether the US retains enough basic intelligence at any level of academia or government to ensure that it can replace all the scientists, creative thinkers, engineers and technicians who put it on top of the heap for the last century.

The answer is likely to be extremely unimpressive, as usual.

If they don’t get sent broke by their education, health care costs will eventually get them. But that won’t matter because by then the debt will be a few hundred trillion and nobody will be able to afford to breed.

All’s well, if you’re an idiot.

This opinion article was written by an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily intended to reflect those of DigitalJournal.com